Exhibitions

not everything meeans something, honey
Tina Bara / Alba D'Urbano, Anna Baranowski, Christiane Baumgartner, Maja Behrmann, Birgit Brenner, Stef Heidhues, Laurette Le Gall, Kristina Schuldt, Jana Schulz, Hanna Stiegeler, Ulrike Theusner
Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig
Exhibition: August 3 - 31, 2019
Opening: Saturday, August 3, 2019, 6 - 9pm

not everything means something, honey 

Twelve artistic positions of different generations, working with different media, were invited. Subjects such as iditenity, consequences of state superiority, war and destruction, advertising and consumption, social clashes and boundaries of the individual, are embraced. The works of the artist are united in their unshakable presence. 

Tina Bara and Alba D’Urbano show two works from their „Kunstwerk“ project, in which they deal with the representation of the woman, the belief in progress and the idea of what kind of domestic environment makes happy people. In the style of commercials household items and furnishing of the 60s and 70s are presented. Furthermore in the background the video work „Kunstwerke 36“ shows scenery from James Bond movies of that time and the song „okay“ by Ide Hitze is played, who in the song picks up Alles Ginsberg’s lecture „Meditation and Poetry“. In the photo series „Die Kunst und das schöne Heim“ the performance is combined with illustrations from the former West German living magazine of the same name. Absurd combinations of images and sound and humorous scenes are used in this work cycle to explore the societal models of this era and their significance today.

Anna Baranowski portraits in her work “Monumental“ the city “New Ordos“ that lies in the Mongolian steppe. In just ten years a megacity was build, which once was claimed to become the Dubai of China(?), yet now it is a ghost town. Everything is designed to the smallest detail: monuments, squares and video projections on high-rise facades tell of a culture that a 10-year-old city simply not cannot tell. Fully automated, the staging of a historical legacy is digitally programmed into the surface of the city, leaving out only the people who could admire and inhabit those monumental buildings. Anna Baranowski scans this post-apocalyptic scenery cinematically, in which only monuments report of human history. The view not only becomes the surviver of a lost society, but also becomes a visitor of a place awaiting the starting signal of the future. 

Christiane Baumgartner transfers fotographic documents into graphic reproduction, and creates thereby factitiousness of real moments. In the series “Nordlicht“, shown here “Nordlicht - 6:08 pm, 2018“, Baumgartner attempts to combine to hard bulky material wood with a light moving motive. In her work movement and time is always present. In “Schwarze und Weiße Sonne“ the experience of the eyes, if you look long into the sun and then close your eyes, the sun is still present, is imitated. In “Strip, 2011“ she shows a recording of a documentary about the Second World War, shot directly from the television. She constantly takes up motives like destruction and war, which are imparted via news broadcasts, implements them on monumental oversized woodcarvings, but also on smaller formats as photographic etching shown here. 

Maja Behrmann works with shapes and their characters and relationships to one another, are they striking or rejecting each other, what are their meaning and where are they located in her works. Behrmann draws, builds, copies, cuts, pasts over, discards - she seeks a alphabet of her shapes, personalities that are abstract yet still convey a feeling. 

Birgit Brenner is now implementing, what installations and drawings already anticipated, in here latest animated video work. In her work, she has always been involved in writing. Short precise sentences develop together, with the images, stories with a beginning and an (happy) end in the mind of the beholder. Now she no longer leaves it with the viewer, but by summarizing several narrative strands she creates a complex story. The latest video work “Sommer, Sonne, Sicherheit“ tells episodes of “emotional and financial surviving“. The drawings encompass motives of recall, hope and despair.  

Stef Heidhues shows new objects, which she created for the show. Starting points for her objects and installations are utilitarian objects, architectural as well as social space and the interaction taking place in them. In practice there are for example empty billboards, sign hangers, store lighting, as well as spaces such as bars or entire districts. She uncouples the true meaning of things and fills them with a new value, for her objects are not reduced to a single meaning. 

Laurette Le Gall deals in her work “Ich spreche ein bißchen deutsch“ with the learning of a new language. The syntax is shortened and new vocabulary is used limited In the prevalent foreign language literature. What happens if you are in a conversation with this limited knowledge? Langauge is identity, the means of getting in contact with our environment, everyday there are misunderstandings, much is left unsaid. Absurde and funny dialogues are heard. Although language is limited, humor lasts as a connecting unit. 

Kristina Schudt extends her artistic oeuvre with works on paper, with the two oversized collages. In her latest canvases she began to take figures and objects apart cubistically, now the act of cutting happens at first and then Schuldt reassembles the pieces on the paper. The human and the movement remain the focus, image thematically, the tubular body forms are present in the work and await a dissolution. 

Jana Schulz portraits in her work “Naunyn“ a group of teenager of Turkish heritage. In particular rituals of the group picked up, what do gestures, mimics and glances mean? What is the structure, cohesion, flowing transitions between profiling and tenderness to discover, including the search for identity. The title of the work is a reference to the Naunynstraße in Berlin, Kreuzberg. In which the fathers of the protagonists where active in a street gang called 36 Boys in the 90s. Today the gang is not existent anymore, yet the gathering is continued by the younger ones. 

Hanna Stiegeler shows her photo series “Il figlio mistero“ and in it she assembles illustrations of grids and gates out from pattern-books for blacksmiths, with paparazzi photos of pregnant celebrities. She poses questions originating form the grating structures, what is supposed to be in public, what should be kept private, how openly do you deal hit personal information and where does this insatiable curiosity towards the privacy of celebrities, particularly towards the alteration of the female body, especially during pregnancy? How much importance is attached to the change, what is the interesting thing about speculation? In the edition “Tissues“ Stiegeler transforms the grating structure to cloths, chooses colours and terminology concretely and questions significance and values. 

Ulrike Theusner is inspired by the metropolis, where individuals encounter one another with their everyday life, their dreams and desires, where disillusionment occurs, when reality and expectation do not meet. In pastel colours humans, situations and observations meet on paper. the large five-part work “Chateau Marmont“ shows a billboard in Los Angeles, with proliferous plants in front of it, the series of drawings “New York Diaries“ follows the “Gespenster“-series, that already showed urban scenes, portraits or interpersonal situations that Theusner experienced.